Camaro City

Camaro City - named by car thieves, because the Camaro is popular there - is a Connecticut factory city that has lost its factories. The stories in this collection concern its people, most of whom take whatever work they can find. They are trash inspectors at the landfill, assistant fleet managers at the traprock quarry, owners of construction companies that go bankrupt. The local teenagers also seem to be having a run of bad luck - they can't handle cigarette lighters safely, let alone motorcycles, and they get too many of their cues about life from the aphorisms displayed on the sides of grocery trucks that rumble up and down the interstate behind the high school. "Never go to bed angry with each other!" one such truck proclaims, but people in Camaro City often do. They also go to bed confused - especially the men, who don't understand why their lives don't seem to fit anymore. (The women are less likely to consider college sissified and are put out of work much less often.) Spirited and stubborn, these people refuse to see themselves as relics of the factory economy. Their more and less fortunate neighbors are also represented here - a girl from the inner city who must choose how to grow up; a young woman of relative privilege who discovers the joy and difficulty of her mother's work. Straightforward, respectful, and beautifully crafted, Sternberg's stories offer a clear window on the life of a small American city late in the twentieth century.